Here’s what I mean. Let’s start with trees. They’re not just ornamental add-ons; they’re infrastructure. Their roots slow stormwater before it floods basements and roads. They clean the air. They give birds a home. In neighborhoods with few trees, people are sicker, poorer, and more vulnerable. Planting them and caring for them should be as non-negotiable as keeping the lights on. We should treat trees as critical public works, expanding the canopy with the same seriousness we expand transit lines, bridges, or water systems. Imagine every block, every schoolyard, every stretch of asphalt systematically converted into shade and shelter. That’s the scale of investment our future requires.
And then there’s biodiversity. Yes, native plants are important. But what we need, urgently, is abundance and variety—gardens thick with life. That means more natives, more heirlooms, more plants from small growers who carry oddball varieties and rare treasures. It means swapping cuttings with neighbors, trading seeds, and breaking out of a model where every plant comes from the same big-box shelf. The more diversity we weave in, the less brittle our landscapes become. Monocultures crack under pressure; diverse communities bend and hold.
Gardening isn’t just a pastime. Sure, it can be joyful, personal, and deeply satisfying. Many of us approach it as a hobby—not that there’s anything wrong with that. But to broadly classify it as only that makes me bristle. To stop there is to undersell its power.
When you garden, you’re not just puttering. You’re practicing skills that every community depends on: patience, ecological literacy, improvisation, and generosity. You’re building soil, conserving biodiversity, preserving culture, and strengthening your neighborhood’s ability to adapt. These aren’t quaint diversions. They’re civic virtues.
That’s why I keep coming back to ecological citizenship—the simple but radical idea that caring for the land is also caring for each other. It’s what turns a single garden into part of a citywide safety net. We aren’t just coaxing roses for beauty (though beauty is still a worthy pursuit). We are cultivating resilience, equity, and health. And we don’t need to wait for sweeping policy shifts or global treaties to act. We can start block by block, tree by tree, seed by seed. At the American Horticultural Society, we’ve been asking ourselves the same questions: how do we move gardening out of the “hobby” category and into the realm of civic responsibility? How do we rally gardeners not just as caretakers of backyards, but as leaders in climate adaptation and community well-being?
If the Rose Garden can be paved today and dug up tomorrow, surely, we can do more with the ground under our own feet. Imagine neighborhoods linked by tree canopy, rain gardens, and pollinator corridors—a living patchwork stronger than any political stage set. That’s the garden that matters: the one we build together.
-Rochelle
The White House Rose Garden doesn’t really matter. There, I said it.
Yes, it’s historic. Yes, it has hosted presidents, photo ops, and state dinners. But it’s also just another patch of ground—one that has been redesigned so many times that each iteration is more political theater than a horticultural vision. It has had Victorian glasshouses, colonial themes, mid-century geometry, and now, fresh paving. If history tells us anything, it’s that this too shall pass. And any gardener knows: pavers come up a lot faster than they go down.
Which is why I’m not losing sleep over it. I’m saving my energy for the bigger concern: that we mistake symbols for substance. We wring our hands over the White House Rose Garden when what really matters are the gardens outside our own doors—where plants aren’t backdrops, they’re lifelines.
